ABOUT

Cecile Chong

BIO
Cecile Chong was born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and grew up in Quito and Macau. She lives and works in New York. Her public art installations include Art in Buildings, 125 Maiden Lane (2024), Makerspark (2024), and EL DORADO – The New Forty Niners, presented across the five boroughs of New York City (2017–2022). She has received fellowships and residencies including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Puffin Foundation, NYSCA, Art Omi, Marble House Project, Surf Point Foundation, Dieu Donné Workspace, the Joan Mitchell Center, among others. Solo exhibitions include Kates-Ferri Projects, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum, Smack Mellon, and Kenise Barnes Fine Art. Her work has also been exhibited at institutions including El Museo del Barrio, the Nevada Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, CUE Art Foundation, and Wave Hill. Chong’s work is held in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, the Museum of Chinese in America, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Long Island Museum, and other public and private collections internationally. Reviews of her work have appeared in Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Whitehot Magazine, Artnet, and The New York Times. She received an MFA from Parsons School of Design, an MA in education from Hunter College and a BA in Studio Art from Queens College. She is a member of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program.

Artist statement
Cecile Chong is a New York–based multidisciplinary artist whose paintings, installations, and ceramic sculptures investigate migration, cultural memory, and ecological interdependence through materials that carry stories across cultures and landscapes. Born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and shaped by diasporic experiences across the Americas and Asia, her work traces the movement of people, languages, and objects across geographies and generations.

Working with encaustic painting, ceramics, installation, and participatory environments, Chong draws on histories of porcelain, global trade routes, and botanical knowledge. Layers of wax, pigment, ceramic fragments, plant forms, volcanic ash, and handwritten languages appear throughout her work, alongside recurring Guagua forms, sculptural figures representing humanity, that embody vulnerability, continuity, and care.

Grounded in longstanding cultural relationships with nature, Chong’s research-driven practice connects archives, anthropology, and environmental observation to create immersive spaces where human and ecological narratives converge. Her work reflects on the fragile yet enduring ties between migration, landscape, and belonging.